SomeOne writes “Here is a copy of a press release which has been circulated this morning — there is no URL.
AK-47s cheaper than books.
It is cheaper in South Africa of today to buy a second hand AK-47 assault rifle than it is to buy a new JK Rowling Harry Potter book. That is the
message author, satirist and social campaigner Pieter-Dirk Uys will bring to Cape Town today (23 April – World Book Day) as part of the campaign to have VAT removed from books.
From police and other sources he has discovered that it is possible to buy one of these weapons for as little as R150. Many paperback books, let alone hard cover editions, are considerably more expensive.
SomeOne writes “Here is a copy of a press release which has been circulated this morning — there is no URL.
AK-47s cheaper than books.
It is cheaper in South Africa of today to buy a second hand AK-47 assault rifle than it is to buy a new JK Rowling Harry Potter book. That is the
message author, satirist and social campaigner Pieter-Dirk Uys will bring to Cape Town today (23 April – World Book Day) as part of the campaign to have VAT removed from books.
From police and other sources he has discovered that it is possible to buy one of these weapons for as little as R150. Many paperback books, let alone hard cover editions, are considerably more expensive.
Uys, along with other authors, will this morning [Wednesday, April 23] collect signatures in central Cape Town for a submission to parliament
to have the 14 per cent value added tax on books removed. The action is part of activities to celebrate World Book Day.
Campaign organizers had hoped originally to present their submission to parliament on World Book Day, which this year falls in the middle of the Easter parliamentary recess. None of the relevant ministers “Arts and Culture, Education, Finance and Trade and Industry were available to
receive it.
“So we will collect more signatures to take to parliament next month when parliament reconvenes,” said Bankole Omotoso, the Nigerian-born academic, author and actor. The campaign, started more than a year ago and supported by the national library, has already collected tens of thousands of individual signatures and won the
backing of all three trade union federations, along with support from libraries, schools and tertiary institutions around the country.
“We support this campaign wholeheartedly,” said Nora Buchanan, acting librarian at the University of Natal in Durban. She pointed out that the
amount paid on VAT each year by the university library would be “enough to purchase several medical or science journals much needed for vital
research”.
The submission, which has been circulated in six of the 11 official languages, was launched by the Campaign Against Reader Exploitation (CARE).
It points out that the government supports an official drive to “build a nation of readers”.
“But it is a contradiction because the government encourages reading on the one hand and then makes it more expensive on the other,” said Omotoso, who is perhaps best known for his “Yebo Gogo” television role.
“Purchase price is a critical consideration for most people, and particularly for those on lower incomes,” noted CARE volunteer Barbara
Edmunds. “Books, in this context, become a luxury and this is tragic, especially in a country with a 60% illiteracy rate,” she said.
CARE has also claimed that VAT is used by some unscrupulous people in the book trade
“as a fig leaf” to increase the prices of books. “This is a tax on knowledge,” agreed
Western Cape academic and author, Keith Gottschalk.
CARE supporters have also lobbied a number of parliamentarians and ministers and, in
December last year, the department of arts and culture officially stated that it would
be looking into ways to remove VAT from books. However, this investigation was halted
in January.
“We were told to wait for the budget,” said CARE co-ordinator, Terry Bell. “But the budget came and went without any mention of VAT on books.”
“Something has to be done because books are just far too expensive and we are trying
to encourage literacy,” said Blanche la Guma, widow of one Cape Town¹s leading writers
who died in exile in Cuba.
She will join the author group, which includes Dorothy Kowen, Diane Case, Bryan Rostron and Indres Naidoo for a “mass sign-up”. The group will also call for all outstanding submission forms to be returned as quickly as
possible and for those individuals, groups and institutions that have not yet indicated support and wish to, to do so by e-mail at [email protected].
“It is a campaign very close to my heart,” said Pieter-Dirk Uys. “There is something very wrong when an AK (47) costs less than a JK (Rowling).”
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